explanation (razo):

This poem is kind of a first for me in that I honestly don't remember writing it (the date on it is April 27, 2005)! I just found it while looking through my collection of poems for additions to the website. My only notes for it are 'Machaut style 14th c. rondeau' and the rhyme pattern: A B A1 A A2 B1 A B. The 'A' and 'B' lines are repeated refrains mixed into similar-rhyming but not repeated lines in the center stanza. The rondeau was definitely a poetic type favored by Machaut and came about as one of the 'fixed forms' of French poetry (see more information, though still a brief write-up, here) in the 13-14th centuries (along with the virelai and ballade) after the golden age of the troubadours/trouveres ended.

This piece is, I think, a great example of the courtly lover's complaint for a better situation than the one in which he exists: there is a sweet love that he feels, but he cannot attain it. What does he do - what does anyone do? Go after that love? Hell no, you whine about it instead! Granted, if the lover aches for the wife of his lord or something like that, whining/singing will let him stay alive - trying to consummate that relationship could get him quickly killed.